There are places on Earth
so soaked in hate that

the only moral
thing to do

after finding new places
for people to live

may be to burn every scrap of wood
from furniture

to framing, fill in every
foundation, break up

all the roads that lead 
into and out of town, then

salt the ground into 
permanent sterility. Every day

you hear of places
so poisoned

that they have forfeited
the right to those locations

and instead should live on only
in the nation of infamy,

country of horror
stories and nightmares.

I do not say this lightly,
for I know every town

is someone’s home and
has at least a modicum

of love clinging to it. I do not
know how to make hate

disappear, and perhaps
I have become hate

when I think these things —
perhaps I should burn myself

then have a friend roll
my smoking corpse in salt

and bury me
in barren ground. But

something must happen
and it is hard to believe

that it will not somehow involve
fire and salt.

I think now and then

that it would be best
if all of us could fall into
amnesia,

tumbling to the ground
without our past knowledge
of walking, talking, sleeping,
shouting, killing.

It would not be
glorious renewal —
I’m no Utopian.

Instead I see it as
a fitting end to things:

all of us helpless, seeing 
every other one of us
from ground level,
lying there uneasily
as if new born, waiting
in complete equality
for an explanation
that will never come.

We’ve lived
for generations
terrorized by
by dark claims of 
mastery from those
utterly in thrall
to a lie called history.

It would be fitting, 
even at such cost, if
they were freed long enough
from that spell
to know how it felt not to be
empowered.

To see the world as it is,
from the ground up.

To squirm.

Off to the carnival
before they get us
by our necks.  We can
practice shooting
at the fake little gallery game
with the lights and the sad
stuffed critters before we have to
shoot back at them
for real. 

Off to the ocean
for beach frolic
before they grab us
and hold us face down
in the bitter surf. We can
sing and dance and
serpentine away to fight
all the livelong day.

Off to the club
and the stage and the lawns
to toss one back and burn one down
before they toss us and burn us out
of body and home. We can
swirl through the thick
air of their war
and bite right back before we go.

We’ll sit there and snarl 
even if we’re bleeding
and they’re holding our joy
in their teeth
as they hover above us
waiting for us
to show pain.

Goddammit, they’ll say to us,
lie down and weep 
the way you’re supposed to;

Goddammit, we’ll bark back to them,
go ahead and kill us
but we will not give you our joy

without war.

Here we have
an ordinary man
feeling more or less pain
who thinks something
needs saying
about it.

He wraps
a prehensile tongue
around the trigger
of a rifle

and learns
how to pull with it:
a broad rush
of words on the wind
crossing his ear delivers
instructions; it proves to be
not easy,
but not impossible
for a quick student.

There’s a hell
of a wind
blowing out there.
Lots of people 
listening,
stretching
their tongues.

If those of us
troubled by this life
were told that 
a collective nap
could solve everything,

would you be among the ones
to lie down?

If you were convinced
a Grand Dream
could shift the gloom
if only all of us
dozed into it at once,

would you 
close your eyes?

If you 
thought this was all that was needed —
all of us asleep and dreaming
of better times
while having no consciousness
of the present,

would you
surrender to

the sun burning you,
the snow drifting over you,
the ocean surging over you
as you slept
among the bones

of the ones
who remained awake?